Audit – Controls

Question: Do any other importers have “best practice” procedures for Finance/AP to audit the value of imported merchandise by comparing the payment for imported merchandise to its entered value and reporting any discrepancies to Import Compliance?  Does U.S. Customs care if importers have such a cross-functional audit process in place? Answer 1: In the past […]

Question: I am working on creating a Trade Compliance assessment form for an upcoming internal import/export assessment. Does anyone have a general template they can share? Answer 1:   Scope & Methodology. You will need to evaluate your company’s international trade and customs regulatory compliance processes against a set of recommended best practices in three areas: […]

Question: Hello, I wanted to know how to conduct a Trade Compliance audit, I joined the Global Trade Compliance team last year and I have been told to take the objective of auditing India operations for the year 2023. Our company is a specialty chemicals provider for the consumer market, transportation, and industrial segment. We […]

QUESTION: Our company is behind on auditing entries filed by one Canadian Broker that we no longer use. Due to heavy workload, it was suggested that we could outsource these audits to our current Canadian broker . However, most of these shipments are DDP. Non-dutiable freight, brokerage and included duty is deducted from the invoice […]

QUESTION: We’re a small company and I am the only person dedicated to our export control program. To comply with the annual audit requirement, what best practices are there for small companies to perform EC/ITAR program audits? Is it acceptable for me to perform the audit, or should it be a third party?%%%%%%%%%% ANSWERS: If […]

QUESTION: Our company currently audits 100% of entries and strives to complete an audit of 100% of our parts every 1-2 years, depending on the commodity. We are finding that we are auditing items every year for years on end and not finding issues and want to better use our time. We are doing both […]

QUESTION: We are trying to implement the 17 point inspection at our sites but we are having a lot of push back about the amount of time it will take to complete for each trailer and the know how to properly conduct an inspection. What are the other members doing to implement this advanced inspection […]

QUESTION: Looking for best practice recommendations on auditing of imports (ie., recommended sample size, focus areas, and tools for general imports and imports with  FTA/Section 301/ MTB etc.). %%%%%%%%%% ANSWERS: Regulatory Audit will look for a process that includes selection samples based on risk.  Check out the COSO framework on internal controls to help build […]

QUESTION: CBP regulatory audit has the expectation that importers will audit the HTS numbers assigned to their parts to ensure they are correct and parts are classified using the HTSUS rules of classification. If you are the only person assigning HTS to your parts,   how do you audit the HTS without bias? What parameters do […]

QUESTION: Can the membership please provide a list of their own risk areas that are audited annually?   Here is mine:   ISF-January Valuation-February NAFTA-March Classification- April 4-way Match-May/June Other trade agreements- July Reconciliation-August 9801/9802-September Country of Origin-October ========== Answers: This question is very broad as risks can be multiple by area so it really […]